The OpenOffice developer team has taken another step towards completion of version 2.4, which is scheduled for publication at the beginning of March, by publishing the first Release Candidate of the free office package.

The project seems to be keeping up to the schedule it set itself for version 2.4. The roadmap envisaged the Release Candidate for February 21. The developers do not expect critical errors to be discovered prior to the March 4 release date.

In the project's own terms, OpenOffice 2.4 is a feature release. Open Office 3.0, the next major release is planned for September 2008.

Among other features OpenOffice 2.4 offers improved diagram functions. The new functions on which work is in progress for version 2.4 of the office package are featured on a wiki page. Tony Galmiche from Open Office France has collected screenshots and links that lead directly to the specifications.